There are a number of scenarios that can lead to a node in a mesh network being connected to a collector or other central node device that is not the best choice. This can happen naturally, such as when the node finds the sub-optimal collector first. It can happen artificially, such as when a new collector is installed or returns from an outage state. Additionally, collectors can only support a limited number of nodes so the addition of new nodes to the network may impact collector selection for both the new nodes and the existing nodes. For these reasons, nodes need to have the ability to determine if there are “better” performing collectors available to be joined in order to optimize the network layout.